The sports culture

Here we go again. An All Black goes off the rails and the nation is spurred into red hot debate. The talkback lines are full of opinion. New Zealanders, once dubbed 'passionless', prove they can get as worked up as any other group of people. Should he stay or should he go?

Should I care or should I not? It frustrates the hell out of me listening to grown people putting so much effort and energy into thinking about an issue that is so far down my list of priorities. I mean every day they let Nanny take almost half of their income, tell them where to send their kids, how to raise them and how not to raise them, tell them when and where they can get healthcare and that they just have to put up with being burgled and .... not a squeak. But a 26 year-old acts like a complete tosser and looks like risking his job and the nation rises up in condemnation or defence!

And it doesn't even have to be an All Black. Any well-known sports celebrity behaves like thousands of other mere mortals and the tongues start.

Yes John Key has it right. We need much more of a sports culture in New Zealand. It diverts the people from those issues which actually do affect their lives. All those problems that government are primarily responsible for creating and maintaining. A sports culture provides a substitute life-of-the-mind where people can express their feelings of impotency and anger. A sports culture satisfies emotions poorly educated people have no other outlet for. It gives vicarious arm-chair living legitimacy. Let's all live for the Saturday game which, win or lose, participate or watch, will be followed by an almighty piss-up to enhance feelings of temporary fragile superiority or anaesthetise predictable pain.

What a worthy role for the state to fill. Just as Dear Leader made herself Minister for Arts, John Key should make himself Minister for Sports. How wonderfully symbolic. A Prime Minister who also has the sports culture as his major portfolio.

I can't wait.